http://blog.nola.com/news_impact/2009/03/large_gingrich.JPG
Ted Jackson / The Times-Picayune
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich talks to James Carville's political science class Tuesday at Tulane University.

The topic, nominally, was the last presidential election, but when James Carville gave Newt Gingrich the floor at Carville's Tulane political science class Tuesday, Gingrich launched a razor-wire critique of government's response to the economic crisis.

His prescription: "Replace the bailout with bankruptcy, for all of them."

Which was not, Gingrich hastened to add, a critique of the Obama administration alone.

Indeed, he said, "the Bush-Obama strategy" of dealing with the economic crisis is a single fabric, having been launched by Republican Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, "the worst treasury secretary in American history."

"You can't have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down, " Gingrich said.

"You want to teach people around the planet, don't make stupid investments." Now, he said, "they're all getting lobbyists" to reserve a spot in the rescue.

Gingrich, attending with his wife, Callista, was Carville's guest at Carville's Tulane University political science class, "The Presidential Election of 2008."

The setting was typically informal: Carville in jeans and a sport shirt, prowling back and forth in front of the class. Nearby sat his wife, Republican consultant Mary Matalin, who blew a kiss to Gingrich on his arrival.

Over the course of a semester Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, is bringing his extensive contacts in the media and both sides of the political aisle to Tulane to autopsy the 2008 presidential election.

But as he observed in a quick discussion of populism before Gingrich's arrival, much of politics consists of variations on a few themes.

"I got news for you, " he told his class of 40 or so undergraduates. "You come here. You pay all this money. You take this class. There's nothing new. It's all happened before."

Indeed, that was at least part of Gingrich's analysis, which was that the collapse of major financial institutions today would not create radically worse conditions than earlier economic reversals.

Without a series of emergency government bailouts beginning last fall, "We would've gone straight to the ground and bounced back, " he said.

The collapse of AIG would create "a very substantial financial shock for 60 to 90 days, " followed by recovery, he said.

For two hours Gingrich, a Tulane Ph.D. before he was speaker of the House of Representatives and architect of the conservative takeover of Congress in 1994, spun off a bottomless supply of statistics: the unemployment rate in 1939, the margin of Abraham Lincoln's 1860 victory, the graduation rate of high school students in Detroit.

He referred to his new think tank, Solutions for Winning the Future, which he says is spinning off new ideas, different than those in play in both Democratic and Republican circles.

Gingrich, although a frank admirer of Gov. Bobby Jindal, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and rising Republican U.S. Rep Eric Cantor of Virginia, is himself a potential presidential nominee in 2012 -- although that topic did not come up Tuesday.

Rather, it was Gingrich on the economy. And his central message was that economic mistakes should have consequences for those who make them -- and that government is not up to the job of "micromanaging" the American economy, as the bailout is already requiring.

"What is happening today is a very deliberate effort to transfer power to the politicians and bureaucrats, " he told the class.

Indeed, he said, outraged demands that the government find some way to strip AIG executives of millions of dollars in performance bonuses even as the company survives on government life support, necessarily tempt the government to unilaterally violate those executives' contracts -- a new kind of hazard, but one required by the political logic of government intervention.

It's not worth it, Gingrich said.

"This is the breakdown of the rule of law for the first time in American history. Why would anyone invest in this kind of world?

"This is like Nigeria. This is like Indonesia."

BucEyedPea

03-22-2009, 10:40 AM

I suspect he's pandering...to run for president later.
Everything, that man does is calculated. He's acted like a RINO when in office.

banyon

03-22-2009, 10:42 AM

I suspect he's pandering...to run for president later.
Everything, that man does is calculated. He's acted like a RINO when in office.

Anyone who's not a RINO besides Blow Paul?

HonestChieffan

03-22-2009, 10:43 AM

Newt will no doubt be a part of the next election cycle. He seems to be about the only one out there who can bring some balance. Dems will be so far left by then at the current rate of move that a republican who can bring the moderate and disaffected democrats to the party and inspire the non voting republicans to vote will have a great opportunity.

BucEyedPea

03-22-2009, 10:46 AM

Newt will no doubt be a part of the next election cycle. He seems to be about the only one out there who can bring some balance. Dems will be so far left by then at the current rate of move that a republican who can bring the moderate and disaffected democrats to the party and inspire the non voting republicans to vote will have a great opportunity.

The bolded part won't happen—not with Gingrich. He's a snake. Hamiltonian govt forever is what we'll continue to have. A radical is needed.

HonestChieffan

03-22-2009, 10:58 AM

Oh I disagree. There are a lot of republicans who dont all agree with the rightwing/conservatives who have taken over the direction of the party. Newt can make it a bigger tent party that can win as opposed to the loony right in republicans and the loony left demos who will create fractures in both parties. Be that as it may, whomever the republicans selct, he or she has got to have that broad appeal and we have to move away form one issue politics and following the loudest nutjob.

BucEyedPea

03-22-2009, 06:45 PM

Republicans yeah. But not small govt Republicans. He's a big govt Republican who poses as a conservative ( small govt R) is my main issue with the man. He's a phony and a fraud.
And most Rs don't know the truth about the Grinch. His public persona is not the same as what he does once in office. Republican socialism is alive and well with subsidies to certain industries.